The Greman Exchange program has been a highlight of my teaching career. Your first question might be if I know the language. The simple answer is no. It is much more complicated than a simple answer. I could survive but not for too long. I will start with a sense of the language and then move into stories. I tried to learn some phrases but it did not prepare for the first night Dawn and I went to dinner in Sasbach in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Sasbach is in the southwestern part of Germany. It contains the Black Forest region. We will talk about the specifics of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) region later. For now, let’s talk about our first dinner in Sasbach. They have many fine restaurants in the area but we decide to go to the Italian pizza place. Sometimes we were not very good at choosing a spot to eat. The good part was that it was very good. We had a nice salad, antipasto, and pizza. We recognized enough words to order correctly. Two things were evident very early. You get water when you ask for it only. It is bottled and the question is always: “mit or still?” We weren’t exactly sure so we went with “mit.” From then on I knew that mit means with carbonation. I hadn’t had muck in the way of sparkling water. Since then I really liked all kinds. The second part was that refills are endless on soda. The meal was very good but when we got done, we had leftover pizza and wanted to take it home. This is where the trouble begins.
I had in my possession a small handheld English-to-German dictionary. I want to try to fit in and so I want to ask for the box in German. My intentions were pure and kind-hearted but I did what most Americans do in a situation like this, I expected them to use the same terminology. I furiously started to thumb through the book so it wouldn’t be so obvious. We asked the waitress for something to carry it in. The waitress was the daughter of the owners and tried to understand me as best as she could but she called her mother out and they worked together to figure out what a “hundenboxen” was. I then went to the next idea and started to use gestures to make my point. By this time the father was in the doorway to the kitchen and watching. Those that may have any understanding of language know that I asked for a doggie box. Feeling foolish I continued with the gestures and hundenboxen. After a few more seconds the mother got a look of recognition and asked us in very good English, “Do you want a takeaway box?’ Now I was mortified because I really felt foolish for not expecting some English combined with my assumption that everyone calls it a doggie box. The restaurant was slow and so the owner and the family sat down and we stumbled through some great conversation. It was then that I truly felt at home in this small town of Sasbach.